The question posed to me: As a professor for an online doctoral program, and having this opinion, what are you doing to make the program better, more effective and more respected?
Almost one out of every three college students in the United States (6.3 million or 32 percent) take courses online, with no face-to-face interaction. Roughly half of those students (47 percent of the ones enrolled in any online courses) are admitted to exclusively-online programs (fully online, zero in-person components). Just over half (53 percent) are enrolled in at least one online course as a part of their education programs1.
In a previous post, I wrote about the dilemma of prestige for online degree programs. A student enrolled in one of my (fully online) courses (in a fully-online doctoral program) saw the post and began asking me questions about what I planned to do about the negative outcomes of online learning in an article2 that post referenced. Her question was written, verbatim, as the opening of this post.
1National Center of Education Statistics (2018). Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 311:15. Washington, DC: National Center of Education Statistics.
2January 2019 Report from Spiros Protopsaltis and Sandy Baum.
To be clear, I am not overly concerned about increasing the prestige of online degree programs as an entity. I am concerned about student learning and focused on ensuring that any student in a course I teach learns what the stated learning outcomes of that course might be. This post will focus on the types of discussions, assignments, and interactions I incorporate into my coursework. There is a caveat, there always is one of those, right? I do not develop every course I teach. I do not write the learning outcomes for every course I teach. There are always those sorts of things out of our control. But, we can as organizations, control for the variance in those instances. Quality may be assured two ways in higher education, at the macro level and another at the micro level. I am really pleased that the online doctoral program for which I teach does control for variance as much as I think is possible in higher education at the macro level. How?
First, our online doctoral program is a member of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) consortium. When I made the choice to apply for online faculty positions, I chose to focus on organizations that had committed to that group’s standards. Just last week I was fortunate to accept the opportunity to serve on that organization’s committee on revisions to The Framework©. I am thrilled (and quite honored!) to be able to contribute at that level. It was exciting to see the commitment to rigor and passion for learning that other members of that group illustrated in my first virtual meeting. In some ways, this consortium will most likely lift the status of the online doctorate; in my view, this is quite nearly as prestigious as a program could be since there are barely 100 programs worldwide making up this gild. Standards are important, and I am extremely satisfied to be working for an organization that commits resources to such an ambitious project. Our department also incorporates Quality Matters (QM) certification into all coursework. I recently completed the development of my first QM-approved doctoral-level course.
At my individual level, whether or not I develop a course, I can follow research-based recommendations that increase student learning outcome attainment. Transactional Distance1 illustrates that interaction is critical because it reduces the perceived chasm that exists between students and instructors2 while Community of Inquiry3 evidences that teaching presence imparts structure and guidance in the online environment4, including “design and organization, facilitating discourse and direct instruction.” Instructors (whether online or in-person) should play three fundamental roles: (a) educational experience designer, (b) learning facilitator, and (c) subject matter expert5. A meta-analysis6 of 74 studies researching interaction in online education programs evidenced firm support for the critical need for interaction and posited that increased, intensive interaction and the enhanced engagement leads to improved achievement and incredibly strong learning outcomes.
1Moore, M. “Theory of transactional distance.” Keegan, D., ed. Theoretical Principles of Distance Education (1997), Routledge, pp. 22-38.
2Lydia Kyei-Blankson, Esther Ntuli, and Heather Donnelly (2016). “Establishing the Importance of Interaction and Presence to Student Learning in Online Environments,” World Journal of Educational Research, 3.
3Garrison, D. R. (2012). Theoretical Foundations and Epistemological Insights. In Z. Akyol & D. R. Garrison (Eds.), Educational Communities of Inquiry: Theoretical Framework, Research and Practice (pp. 1-11). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
4Maggie Hartnett (2016). Motivation in Online Education. Singapore: Springer.
5Ida M. Jones, (2011). “Can You See Me Now? Defining Teaching Presence in the Online Classroom through Building a Learning Community,” Journal of Legal Studies Education, 28, 67-116.
6Robert M. Bernard, Philip C. Abrami, Eugene Borokhovski, et al. (2009). “A meta-analysis of three interaction treatments in distance education.” Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1243-1289.
So how do I increase interaction? There are three standard activities on which I rely. First through discussion posts. Nearly every learning management system (LMS) is packaged with units that are subdivided into two learning activities: discussions and assignments. Discussions are normally used to promote interaction between students enrolled in the course. However in most programs where I have taught there was minimal involvement from the instructor in the discussion posts. Granted, the time it would take to respond individually to each post and follow-up reply is monumental (I tried it in my first online course—it is not a realistic expectation of instructors to interact at that level with as many students as we enroll into a single course). There are better ways to interact with discussion posts.
My favorite is to implement a third type of activity that falls into the classroom assessment technique1 (CAT) category (Angelo and Cross, 1998). First, I implement this as a “muddiest point” level-one evaluation2, in which the student writes a paragraph (maximum) describing what was most unclear from the week’s learning activities (reading/videos). Second, I also scan each student’s discussion post and write three words from each post. Third, I conduct a mini-textual (qualitative) analysis and arrive at the most common themes. Finally, I make a weekly transition video that does three things: explains the muddiest points further, summarizes what I took from the discussion posts, and then add how I see those aiding in the transition to our next weeks’ topic(s). I strive to always keep those videos under 13 minutes, and normally a video is around five minutes in length—there have been exceptions and I give warnings if I exceed 13 minutes so the students know they’ll need additional time if they choose to watch that particular video. The in-course feedback has been extremely positive from students and emphatically appreciated in student end-of-course evaluations. I incorporate the feedback into each iteration of successive courses too.
Does this take time? Absolutely! For me, witnessing the increase in engagement coincide with an increase in understanding the material is worth that extra effort and time. When I began, I edited the videos. One morning I had an interruption at nine minutes, and the completed video was 9:13. I decided not to edit that one. The students’ loved it. They were pleased that I wasn’t afraid to show vulnerability. Since then, I’ve never edited another video. The transition videos are always optional, there is no credit added or subtracted from any student’s mark for watching or not watching a video. The tracking data indicate that the practice is appreciated and enjoyed.
1Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, 2nd edition.
2Kirkpatrick, Donald L. (1994). Evaluating training programs : the four levels. San Francisco : Emeryville, CA :Berrett-Koehler
The assignments are detailed exercises in critical thinking, and generally involve generating (any media, podcasts, blogs, videos) artifacts that evidence learning at the top three tiers of learning taxonomies. I scrutinize those mercilessly. I get complaints that I am too harsh. I get lots of feedback (on my initial feedback). That only increases the interaction, and generally at the end of a course, the students appreciate that too. Some do not appreciate that level of rigor, but the small percentage that do not are learning about accountability, and I am completely okay with that too. This too takes an inordinate amount of time considering the various forms of media that students choose for their projects. I enjoy learning too; there isn’t an online course that I’ve taught, from which I haven’t learned.
This post is much lengthier than I intended it to be, but I wanted to respond appropriately to a justifiable query, after my initial post regarding the attainment of prestige for online learning. This provided me with an opportunity to reflect on my practices. For that, I am also grateful. Thank you for the additional interaction (you know who you are.) 🙂